If You Have Time to Worry
by Chippen Kitten
Summary: You do NOT run, you do NOT escape by the skin of your teeth with your reckless, zany, amazingly happy-go-lucky rescuer, and under any circumstance, you do NOT fall in love with them along the way. Elise breaks all these rules and then some.


**Yeah,yeah, yeah, groan all you want to. Too fucking bad, honeybun. Sonelise is a hated enough ship as it if but you** _better fuckin' BELIEVE_ **I'm going to contribute in the content this beautiful ship deserves. Also, there's a Sonelise tag on Tumblr/Ao3 that I recommend getting into if you ship this, too.**

 **If you're willingly reading this, knowing it has sonelise and are still going to post hate because you have nothing better to do: hi, and welcome to your tape.**

 **But, for everyone else who's new, old, somewhere in between or wants a rewritten ending for 06, here you go! Enjoy!**

* * *

"This is it," Elise says quietly, soon after the mirage of her younger self and her father leave the picture. She's the first to step up to the little bubble concealing the flame, with Sonic just a brush away from her. "This is where everything began."

Wordlessly, she reaches over and cups just underneath the wick of the flame, bringing it close enough to catch every little movement of the colors dancing on the surface. She sees red, blue, orange, and in the center, a white so pure it almost hurts to look at.

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. "Who knew that such tiny flame could bring such devastation?" She knows what she has to do and at the same time prays that she'll retain some input on their adventure together.

It's a stupid question to ask and she knows it. Her father knew, hell, the scientists knew, everyone that had a part to play and blood to spill knew and understood and kept it away from her. Granted, she was a child, but that doesn't justify what they did. They'd known the whole time, and still decided to play with the gods.

And look at where that got them now.

Sonic is silent when it dawns on her, when the full realization settles in that this will be the last time she will ever see him again, the last time she gets to stop being a figurehead and a princess and just be Elise, and the last time she'll really ever get to smile or cry or scream in frustration and be fine with it.

And it _hurts_.

And she's not ready.

Just two hours ago, he died right in front of her. Just two hours ago, she let loose a vindictive, bloodthirsty demi-god in a futile search for the cause of its release, and in just thirty minutes, her entire life and the cause of her existence was undermined because as it turns out; the part of Solaris that she was holding onto was just that; just a part. The real deal is what she's holding in her hands right now. Instead of the rough, charred destruction she's been told that'd happen if she cried, Solaris is warm, content, and oblivious to what she's about to do.

She's been lied to.

Of course, they didn't know about the true Solaris, _no one_ knew about the true Solaris, but it doesn't dispute the fact that her whole life was a lie.

She has the right to be angry forever.

"If," she turns to Sonic, and maybe even he can see the quiet rage burning bright behind her eyes, because he quirks an eyebrow in question. "If we put out this flame, Solaris will never exist." He seems to be catching up now. "And...we'll never have to worry about the flames of disaster, right?"

Sonic nods, and she hates how hopeful she sounds.

A life devoid of her father's mistakes. A life in which she's free to cry and scream and express her frustration without coming across as cold and unfeeling. A life better than the one she has now.

With the price of loosing every memory she's ever had within these past two days.

"But...our encounter." Elise pulls her gaze away from Solaris to look down at him.

She wants to laugh again. If someone walked up and told her that she was going to be threatened in front of her entire kingdom by a balding old man and then promptly rescued by three-foot anthropomorphic _blue fucking hedgehog_ , and then fall for said hedgehog in the process, she'd laugh til' her sides hurt. Or probably look at them like they'd grown two heads. Or both. Both is good.

"You and I will never meet."

Now it gets him; his eyes widen and his mouth sets into a line, but he barely makes any protest, because as much as it matters to him he still wants her to do what's right.

 _That's what she's been trying to do her whole life._

Don't cry Elise, be a strong queen Elise, keep your back straight, chin up, pay attention to your studies, never fall below the bar, do this, be that, be this, do that, without any consideration to how she really feels. Maybe it's because she never said anything, or because she never thought it was important enough to _try_ to say anything, because as much as she needs to put the last two days behind her and blow out this damn flame, she _can't_.

"I..."

She _won't_.

"...To be _honest_..."

She _doesn't want to._

Unbelievably, surprisingly, and irrevocably, there's something inside her soul that absolutely, does _not_ want to do the right thing. She does _not_ want to erase everything. She does _not_ want the last forty-eight hours to disappear. She wants to stay with him, for however long this weird limbo might be. She wants him to smile and toss her up in the air like back at Eggman's ship. She wants to go back to being _more_ than just Princess Elise. She's a selfish and horrible person, sure, _whatever_ , but against all the odds and everything she's ever been taught since she was _fucking seven_ —

"I _don't care_ about the rest of the world!"

It feels awful and therapeutic to say it. The world she's known never cared about her; placing her in awful situations with an awful curse upon her since she was a kid, with not even a question to her mental health. _Oh, it's not like it matters, right? Just keep everything from her, baby her like a child, and she'll be fine!_

From the start, she's carried the destruction of the world she knows with her and it's never really made such an impact until now, when she's _still carrying_ the destruction of the world _in her hands_ and doesn't care _at all_.

She vehemently ignores what that says about her.

At the same time, though, the world she knows contained her mother. Her first friend. Her father, even before he decided that using a demi-god for time-travel was a good idea.

Sonic doesn't seem surprised; he doesn't even react, instead, directing her attention to him and taking one of her hands in his, his other replacing the one he took from under the flame.

" _Elise_ ," he says, and she doesn't realize she's crying until he pulls on her arm hard enough to reach up and gently wipe a tear away from her left eye.

He looks so sure. He doesn't even seem to understand to depth of the situation, or maybe he does and he's really good at hiding what he cares about.

"Just _smile_."

The first thing that registers with her is that he never asks her to blow out the flame, or tries to coerce her into making a choice.

He just wants to see her happy. Call her out for being conceded or self-centered—she doesn't care, because no matter which way you spin it, the world she blows out in this flame is a world in which he doesn't get killed because of a mistake.

Maybe that's why she does it, in the end, why she picks her head up after a solid minute of lament, gives him the weakest excuse for a smile ever known to man, and ever so softly, blows out the flame and the memory of someone she'd fallen in love with in just a short amount of time.

* * *

Everything's fine for Elise as a child. Of course, she can't imagine why it wouldn't be. Her mother is...gone, but her father learns to move past the grief and continue raising his daughter with the belief that no matter the situation, people will often go about the wrong way in achieving the right thing.

Elise, being seven, does not understand.

It doesn't matter, because soon after, he treats her to ice-cream, and allows her to stay up one hour after her designated bedtime.

* * *

Her pubescent years breeze on awkwardly. She finds blood in places she didn't know blood could come out of and has things like the human reproduction system taught to her in as little as five seconds in an aside from a maid.

She wonders about how things would go in another life, if everything wasn't as fine as it is now. She soon gets bored with that in favor of doodling in her journal. Probably wasn't important, anyways.

* * *

It's quiet when she wakes up.

She presses the button on her alarm before it sounds, hops off the best and stretches, getting a nice back pop out of it. She pulls her shawl from its home on her bed post and sleepily makes her way towards the balcony.

She opens the door noiselessly, and doesn't sit down on the chair laid out for her. Instead, she buttons her shawl so that she doesn't have to hold it, and lays both her hands on the cool marble of the balcony post and sighs.

The wind is refreshingly brisk, seeing as the heat will only escalate once the sun comes up. From up here she watches her kingdom; the people that set up shop in the marketplace, the people leaving early to water their crops and feed their livestock, or hell, even those getting ready for the festival, given that it'll only start once the afternoon heat really hits in.

It's odd until you realize that Soleanna's the Kingdom of Water. Children will run and splash each other playfully with buckets of it, people will sell the juiciest fruits once the heat becomes unbearable, and everyone will give thanks to the blessed waves that've given their home peace for centuries.

She honestly can't imagine Soleanna any other way, air, earth, or even fire. That's a ludicrous idea if she'd ever thought of it.

And yet.

She sighs and pulls away from the post once the sun rises, and can already hear the castle coming to life. Maids bustle to and fro from other rooms, the chefs get hard to work on the cooking for the festival's feast, and most importantly, her father, who, even after the bone-deep grief from her mother's death, always kept it in his best interest to keep the kingdom stable, peaceful, and happy. He's everything she admires and hopes to be one day, when she becomes queen.

She just needs to shake off the weird feelings. Elise walks back into her room and sits on her bed, thinking as she waits for her maids to gather for her fittings.

 _Something about today just doesn't feel right_ , she finds herself musing. It's a proverbial feeling in her gut, and suddenly, her left hand feels just a little heavier than before, like someone else's was placed onto it.

 _It'd have to be really big though_ , Elise thinks as she flexes her fingers. _And I don't know anybody with big hands._

Right?

Right.

It's an odd realization, one that comes to her as she idly pulls on the duvet or doodles in her notebook, but it comes to her that she definitely, absolutely, does not like this.

Elise doesn't get it. She's in her own home, in her own room, and she's just waiting for her maids, the way she's always done for the past ten years. What's so different now?

For a moment, she gets the strong urge to just push it away and leave it alone for now, but she has the feeling that if she leaves it for later then she'll never really face it. She questioned it when she was young, older, and even now, between the classes and the scheduled hearings with her father. It's always been the same. Question the difference, ignore it, and only come back it months later. She doesn't get it. Why is it only now that she's able to push past the will to ignore it? What makes this so different?

Amazingly, that's when it hits her.

It's _different_.

She often dreamed about wide grassy fields and sunny blue skies and stories about monsters and magic and love most foul, and most of the time, she was the one running in them.

Suddenly they no longer feel right. Wasn't someone else running alongside her?

She racks her brain but nothing comes up.

She paces around her room and can't recall a thing.

The most she can really remember is a streak of blue, and that's about it. She sighs in frustration. She doesn't know anyone blue.

She's nervous.

She's anxious.

No, no, what was the word? She was—

 _Worried_.

"That's silly," she huffs, tapping her foot against the marble of her bedchamber's floor. "I shouldn't be worried. There's nothing to _be_ worried about. After all, if I've got time to worry, then—"

She blinks owlishly.

What... _do_ you do when you have time to worry?

Elise taps her upper lip with her index finger thoughtfully, opting to sit back on the bed. Her feet tap against the headboard, and her fingers tap anxiously against the duvet. She feels out of breath, like she just finished a big run.

Or wants to go on one.

"Maybe I should," she finds herself musing. "Just a little walk." Surely the fresh air will do her good.

She's eager to pick out something different today. Some jeans, an oversized hoodie, and some sneakers, _no_ , the good kind. She has a feeling she'll need them.

She manages to get out of her fittings for a while, telling her ladies-in-waiting that she'll only be out for a brisk walk around the square, and is able to leave the castle without causing too much of a ruckus.

It's _so pretty_ out here.

While Elise will still love her view from her balcony, getting to actually walk around the square without causing too much unwanted attention is pretty fun. She definitely doesn't get anywhere near the preparations for the festival though; they'd recognize her in an instant, with or without her feather barrettes or makeup.

Instead, she heads out to the far edge of the square, where just over the horizon she can barely see the beginnings of a grassy green field.

And it's at that moment she feels it; the last bit of the advice she was thinking about in her room, and it's at that moment when she breaks out into a run.

She's slow and wobbly; she's never run very fast, or very far, but now, here, under the presence of the sky and the reassuring ripple of the river and the words she must've received a lifetime ago, she picks her head up, and she _runs_.

And it's _so good_. She dashes through the square, just a little past the castle, and around the moat to send her into the other part of the kingdom, where she runs into excited children and parents alike, some who even recognize her, and some who only wave at her as she's on her way.

Elise has no idea where she's going, but the pounding of her heartbeat and the burning in her legs tell her while what she's doing might not be the right thing, it sure is hella fun, and maybe, just the right way to go about it.

When she stops, it's at the setup from the festival. She bends down to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead, and not a second later, she's laughing breathlessly to herself, looking up at the clouds drifting lazily in the sky, because against everything, this feels so _right_.

The wind blows, and something catches her attention in the corner of her eye. An odd color spot, sure. A streak of blue, maybe? She's about to question it when one of her ladies-in-waiting hurriedly pick their way across the setup to her side. "Miss Elise? Miss Elise!"

She's still staring at the horizon, sure she saw something or someone familiar or important, before she promises to herself to find out more later. "Yes?"

Francine, her main lady-in-waiting, sighs heavily. "Oh, darling, you almost gave me a fright. It's past your fitting time!"

"Oh, it's fine, I already told the rest of the staff I was out on a...little walk."

"If by walk, you mean prance around the square, then fine." Francine resumes her usual, a disapproving frown and crossed arms. "Come, Elise. Today's very important and I mustn't let your wild imaginations get in the away of your schedule. Off to the castle with you, at once!"

Elise represses the urge to roll her eyes. "Yes, Francine."

She takes the long way, of course, out of spite.

* * *

 _There she is._

Out on her gondola, flanked by priests and standing next to her father is Princess Elise, heir to the throne of Soleanna, one of the most controversial figureheads in the kingdom, and so goddamn recognizable that Sonic can't put his finger on why she seems so important to him.

He doesn't really question it, though. He isn't the fastest thing alive for nothin'.

But he can barely get a good glimpse of her, what with all the people standing in his way. He rolls his eyes. The pros of being three-feet tall.

He zips around the square for a better view, opting to choose the platform near the structure of Soleanna's deity, high above everyone else. Elise is standing near her father, the perfect picture of conversational solidarity. Her posture is lose but firm, but he can still make out the fingers on her left hand tapping incessantly against her dress. If anything, she looks nervous as all get out, but everyone else doesn't seem to see it as easily as him.

He wonders why.

Before the gondola can leave his sight, he's dashing towards the platform, using his momentum to swing him up to the top, where he lands seamlessly. Elise, waving to the crowd, pauses for just one second as one of her barrettes fly off the left side of her head. She follows its path her eyes, about to protest, when just like that, he falls into her line of sight, and she sees him for what looks like the first time.

Their gazes last for less than a second. Nothing more, nothing less, but when she looks away, he notices that her fingers stopped tapping against the hem of her dress, and the smile she has on her face is just a little more genuine.

The barrette that he'd disturbed on his way up brushes against his cheek before he takes it into his hand.

Sonic grins a little to himself. She looks so _happy_.

"Elise?" asks her father. She doesn't realize that her hand is brushing against the spot her barrette once was, and her reply to him is almost autonomous as she smiles at the blue streak racing towards the horizon. "Elise, are you alright?"

"It..." She brings her hands close to her chest, where her heart is, squeezing before letting them fall. " It felt like...someone was calling me."

"I'm sure it was just the wind," her father replies, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. Elise just nods—"Of course,"— her smile a little wider as she waves to her subjects.

After all, she doesn't know anyone fast enough to blow her barrette from her hair and dispel her apprehension just before the ceremony begins, right?

She chuckles lightly to herself.

Right.

The place where her barrette was tingles ever so slightly, and Elise, nervousness eliminated and reassurance found, breaks out in the carefree laughter and heart-racing joy she feels she missed out on for a lifetime.

* * *

 **I love them so much, you have no fucking idea.**

 **It always amazes me with the people who say Elise had no development and I'm? Just? Have you SEEN her when she and Sonic literally jumped off a flaming plane and she was just 'aight lets do it'? In the beginning of the game she was way more reserved and easy to scare, and then towards the end she literally escapes a fortified egghead base because what Sonic tells her and how he makes her feel. The _one thing_ I hate about '06 is that no one was able to see her development, that, or they just refused to accept that she had any because she's a 'nasty necro-bestialic!1!1'**

 **One thing's for sure; people wouldn't be sayin' that, if Amy did the kiss.**

 **And it makes me angry.**

 **but whatevs, if you enjoyed, leave a comment, if you didn't, leave a comment anyways so I can turn your hatred for Elise into vindictive energy to love her anyway**


End file.
